Blade Runner

[ksmith]

I saw it for the first time last night, hacked with commercials. The station, AMC, ran it again immediately, and I watched it again. Been thinking about it off and on all day.

Parts of it are so, so good. Every scene with Rutger Hauer. Daryl Hannah. William Sanderson. The dark world and the melange of clothing and language and the strange tiny children? Mutants? Sanderson’s apartment, filled with his companions. The rain.

I’m a fan of Harrison Ford, but he didn’t fit this movie. He lacks noir authority, and he needed it to pull off Deckard. I watch the scene below, Hauer’s Tears in the Rain speech, and dammit they cut to Ford’s reaction and all he has to offer is his Han Solo “oops’ expression. I’m not sure who from that early 80s era would have worked better. A more coiled-spring type, yes, but I can’t think of a name. But hi-ho open-face sandwich? No. I read that he fought against the inclusion of the voiceovers, and I agree with him. I know they’re a noir convention, but they added nothing to the story and Ford’s voice made them worse.

Yes, I do so like him. But here he’s a pastel golf shirt at a Goth Ball.

Hauer is incredible. Terrifying and mad, yet tender in his scenes with Hannah. But when they’re together in Sanderson’s flat, there’s that undercurrent. That they schemed to get in and now they’re there. That they’ve come for something, and they won’t leave until they get it. That Sanderson is likely a dead man. And they do it all with looks. The danger comes off of them in waves as they smile at one another.

I guess you could say I was enthralled.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Agree 100%. Ford always struck me as the weakest link in that movie (followed closely by Sean Young, who has always been a little wooden and off-putting to me, but wooden and off-putting worked okay for her character in BR).

I have loved Rutger Hauer since Ladyhawke, which is ironic since it's not really his best role. (Roy Batty may well be his best performance ever.)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Yup--like I said above, Sean's perceived woodeness worked in this role,

Whenever Hauer is onscreen, the movie sings. That scene in the scientist's home--SY's "uncle"--is so good. I have only seen him in a few roles--I did see Ladyhawke--but Roy Batty is in another league.

Oddly enough, I think Hauer could have played Deckard as well. To me, that role called for a European actor. The two overtly "American" characters--Deckard and his boss the bigot--stuck out like the proverbial sore thumbs to me, while Edward James Olmos, frex, clicked.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I don't know if the role called for a European actor--I think of "noir" as quintessentially American--but it called for someone less all-American, corn-fed, Midwest buckaroo.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

When I think of Euro-noir, I think of the film Rafifi, or Alain Delon as Tom Ripley. The same dark fatalism, though maybe not as much with the femme fatale.